Artists invited to participate in the exhibit were asked to create artwork which reflected their personal investigations of the Watsonville Sloughs—one of the largest remaining fresh water marshlands in California"s coastal Zone. The show was designed in part to bring the often overlooked and misunderstood sloughs to the attention of the surrounding community.

These sloughs, tucked in amongst new urban developments and old agricultural farms, provide a crucial resting spot for migrating birds and are home to resident mammals, plants and waterfowl including many endangered species. California has already lost over 90% of its Wetlands to development, and the sloughs that remain are dangerously impacted by illegal dumping, litter and tainted run-off from storm drains and agricultural irrigation.

In early September of 2000 Larson began exploring the slough system. Impressed with the wild, natural beauty of these wetlands, he wrote, "On my walks around the sloughs I was continually jolted back and forth between serene natural phenomena and the evidence of human activity punctuating the landscape. The most powerful of these juxtapositions were the abandoned shopping carts in and around the sloughs—a poignant spilling over into the sloughs of the new housing developments and shopping centers which continue to encroach upon these wetlands."

Using one of these derelict shopping carts as an appropriated "ready-mold" Larson packed the cart with dirt, straw and trash collected from the sloughs, creating an adobe "positive" of the shopping carts "negative" space—a literal and poetic returning of discarded consumer goods to the shopping cart basket.

Larson concludes, "I chose to pull the shopping cart out of the center of these wetlands and use it to communicate and display the condition of the Watsonville Sloughs. "California Adobe" is a testament to the tragic influence man has had on an inherently beautiful environment that plays such a vital role in California's ecology."